Malaysia wants to produce its own poultry vaccines

Malaysia is exploring opportunities to produce vaccines for the Newcastle disease and Avian influenza, which incur huge losses to the national livestock industry, said Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

He said Malaysia was desirous of establishing collaboration with any research institution which could come up with the vaccines as there was dire need for them.

Muhyiddin, who was given a briefing on seven types of research to biotechnology, agriculture and veterinary services during a visit to the University of Maryland, said Malaysia was keen to establish collaboration with institutions which had undertaken research on NCD and AI poultry vaccines.

The University of Maryland is recognised as a leading public research university in the US. Eighteen Malaysian students are pursuing their Masters degrees at the university.

Muhyiddin said he was informed that the University of Maryland had begun collaboration with Universiti Putra Malaysia on vaccines, and he wanted it to progress to a more concrete stage.